Rave: Be like Bill

If you’ve been on Facebook recently, I’m sure you’ve seen all of the recreations of the “Be like Bill” meme popping up your timeline.

For those of you who don’t frequent Facebook as much as the average college student, the “Be like Bill” meme essentially consists of a stick figure named Bill passive aggressively telling people how to behave on social media. The phrases he uses range from “Bill sees something that offends him. Bill moves on. Bill is smart. Be like Bill” to “Bill likes to travel. Bill doesn’t check into every f*cking place he visits just to show off. Bill is humble. Be like Bill”.

After Bill became as popular as he did, other versions of the meme were released. This includes a female counterpart, named Emily, as well as memes in other languages, including the Spanish version, Sé como José, and an Italian version, Sii come Bill.

Recently, people have been able to plug in their own name into an online generator and create their own, personalized memes. You can generate as many as you want and share the ones you like (or that are the funniest) on Facebook. I’ve also been plugging in my friends’ names to generate applicable memes about their social media behavior and then posting those on their Facebooks.

I think it’s pretty clear why this meme gained so much popularity – it’s the best way to let someone know how you really feel about their excessive social media use, and the possibilities are literally endless. –N. Gandhi